Mar 1st-3rd - - - Holstebro [Dania]
PARTNERSHIP VISIT OF KANA THEATRE AT ODIN TEATRET'S.
Program
ODIN TEATRET
Odin Teatret is a theatre troop founded by Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba in 1964. The theatre is based in Holstebro, Denmark.
Eugenio Barba, born in 1936 in Italy, at the age of eighteen emigrated to Norway where initially he worked as a welder and a sailor. He also studied at the Oslo University. In 1961 he went to Poland, initially as a student of the Warsaw's State Theatre School, and then as an assistant of Jerzy Grotowski, who at that time was the director of the little known Opole-based Teatr 13 Rzedow. After three years of his apprenticeship, Barba traveled to India, and then returned to Norway to form his own theatre with a group of young people called Odin Teatret.
In 1966 Odin Teatret accepted an invitation of the Danish municipality of Holstebro and created the unique theatre laboratory in an old farm. Since 1979 Holstebro is also the base for ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology, a special place of intercultural exchange, in which various, mostly Eurasian theatrical traditions, such as Indian kathakali, or Japanese Noh meet in a creative dialogue. ISTA is also a multicultural network of scholars whose common field of study is theatre anthropology.
Over forty years of activity of Odin Teatret resulted in almost seventy productions, presented all over the world. Among the best known are Ferai (1969), Min Fars Hus (My Father's House) (1972), Brecht's Ashes (1980), The Gospel According to Oxyrhincus (1985), Talabot (1988), Itsi Bitsi (1991), Kaosmos (1993) and Mythos (1998). Barba and his team gradually worked out and developed methods and ideas; since 1974 Odin Teatret has practiced the so-called "barter" exchange with societies without theatrical experiences, like the Yanomani tribe of South America. Performances of Odin Teatret, rich in visual and aural sphere, poetic in mood, and often radical in their political statement, are characterized by the authenticity of the message, making them a special experience for the audience, regardless the level of understanding of their erudite symbolism.
